Its not THAT bad. Even if both cases have to re-start, worst case is that they'll take as long to get back to the 9th as they took to get there in the first place. And even if that happens, there are others cases in the pipeline. Most notably, Wollard v Maryland, which is much better case in all respects.

The problem is that some case in California has to be ruled on one way or the other, else the law in California remains standing no matter what the Supreme Court has said for non-California cases.

Every law that violates the Constitution must be challenged and won against individually, and they all remain standing until such a successful challenge.

So the Supreme Court could rule that carry in public is a right in cases brought in every other state, and it wouldn't have any effect on us until a case challenging the California law was won.

Let me put it in unambiguous terms via an hypothetical example. Suppose the Supreme Court had ruled in favor of carry in public in a case brought in every other state in the land (hence, a total of 49 cases). Suppose, too, that a California case like Richards was subsequently brought and the 9th Circuit did what the 9th Circuit does (ignore Supreme Court precedence) and ruled against us. Further suppose that the Supreme Court's composition changed between the time the case was brought and the time it was appealed to the Supreme Court, and that the Supreme Court subsequently denies cert. What's the end result? Answer: that the California law infringing upon the right to keep and bear arms remains standing, and does so despite the Supreme Court having upheld the right to keep and bear arms in public in every other state.

The end result is that what happens in other carry cases is irrelevant in the face of a circuit court that refuses to heed Supreme Court jurisprudence. This is why time is of the essence specifically for Richards, for even if Baker wins at SCOTUS, it will have no effect on us until we win Richards.

The takeaway here is that the only thing that wins in other cases changes is the jurisprudence that the courts are supposed to follow. Such jurisprudence is of no use when the courts that are supposedly governed by it are insistent upon ignoring it in favor of their own whims, something the 9th Circuit is famous for doing.